Location, Location, Location!

Had the day off today, so I decided to head out to a another of my favorite locations, which many Urbexers around here affectionately call “Hospital E”. While I won’t tell you the real name of this placex, nor where precisely it is (in the interest of protecting the site from vandals and graffiti “artists”), the industrious Urbexers out there will find a way to locate the site. What I can tell you is that there are a lot of resources out there on the website, mere mouse clicks away, that will help you find great locations like this one to shoot. Some of my favorite “research” tools are: Panoramio, Flickr, Google, and Google Maps. So how do I start my research? First, I’ll to a general search for something I am interested in shooting, for example SANITARIUM GERMAN BRANDENBURG URBEX. That will usually produce several images and blog posts by others out there who have visited and photographed such places. Sometimes, you luck out and find a geo-coord and all you have to do is plug that baby in to your favorite GPS and you’re off to the races. Sometimes, it’s a little more challenging, because most Urbexers don’t post geo-coords. No problemo! That is when I get creative. In one particular case, I had been itching to shoot a site for which NO ONE (and I mean NO ONE) was willing to provide location data, and I found nothing out there on the web after lots of searching. So what did I do? I found a photographer who had shot at the location, and who happened to posted most of his images in date and time order, and I map tracked his photographs. That is, I reviewed all photos he shot on the same day, and then looked at every photo closely to find location indicators (glimpses of street signs, names of shops, landmarks, etc.). Then I headed over to google maps and followed the bread crumbs until I located likely target areas based on the date/time stamps of key images that contained the clues I needed. Easy, peasy! Like I said, if you want it bad enough, you’ll find a way. Oh, and if you come here to Berlin, I’ll take you there myself!

absolutely stunning capture!

Thanks, Scott. What you may have noticed, however, is that there are a couple of spots caused by condensation on the outside of the lens caused by the quick transition from the cooler outdoors to the warmer indoors. Had sweat all over by ball… head too!

You’re right – sometimes people will help out, other times not and there is a lot of investigation involved. Its painstaking and hard work but worth it in the end when you find that great location.

You have a complete command of the HDR process, your images take my breath away.